In a manufacturing process of a semiconductor integrated circuit, after completion of a process, the result of the process is investigated. At this time, a thickness of a film deposited on a wafer, on which a semiconductor integrated circuit is formed, is measured by an inspection apparatus different from the manufacturing apparatus that carried out the process. Additionally, a particle inspection may also be conducted. Thereby, a check of a process is performed. That is, when fault is found in an inspected object by such check, it is determined that a certain defect exists in the manufacturing apparatus and the manufacturing apparatus is fixed. In addition, since productivity would fall if all wafers are subjected to the inspection, only a wafer extracted by arbitrary samplings is inspected.
In recent years, the above-mentioned inspection apparatus has been built into the inside of the manufacturing apparatus, which carries out the process. Thereby, the manufacturing apparatus, which can inspect all wafers without reducing productivity, has also been developed. In the manufacture apparatus of such a type, since an inspecting unit is built therein, a detection result is fed back to the manufacturing apparatus shortly after a defective part is detected in the manufactured wafer so as to take measures of automatically changing process conditions.
However, a thickness of the film formed on the wafer may vary on an individual wafer basis, or also vary within each wafer. In process conditions, such as temperature and pressure, an instability based on unevenness due to the change with passage of time and difference in position etc. There may be a case in which a defective part is not detected due to the instability, or a degree of defectiveness is small. In such a case, the manufacturing process is continued without changing process conditions.
In a final probe inspection process that is performed after completion of the manufacturing processes, the semiconductor integrated circuits formed on the wafer are subjected to an electric function test so as to judge whether the semiconductor integrated circuits are good in their quality.
Therefore, even when it is judged by the prove inspection in the last process stage as mentioned above that the semiconductor integrated circuit is defective, the probe inspection is conducted to all the chips in which the semiconductor integrated circuits are formed. Accordingly, the-probe inspection is performed on the defective semiconductor integrated circuit, which is not adopted as a product. Thus, there is a problem in that the probe inspection is unnecessarily performed on the defective semiconductor integrated circuit.